Here is my question. Hi everyone! My youngest daughter is 15, runs cross country, track and is also in marching band and the musical. Yesterday, she was recently diagnosed with bilateral sciatica from overuse. She told me she wants to start keto, but I am on the fence with her doing this. I’ve suffered from sciatica for the past 18 months and my flare ups have decreased with keto. Do any of you have children that are athletes(distance runners, specifically) who follow keto as well? I know she needs time to become fat adapted. I’m curious about how strict you are with them following keto? I’ve asked in multiple groups and no one seems to give any information. I’m still waiting on approval from keto kids. Any help with this would be great.
Kid athlete and keto
With what I know about keto, there is nothing wrong with any age person being in ketosis. Babies are born in ketosis. It is a natural metabolic state, and what anyone would have been in if they lived in the age before excess carbs. It is probably the healthiest thing she could do to prevent having a deranged metabolism later in life.
The downside though, would be the initiation phase and the time it takes to get fat adapted as you mentioned. If she has any meets or competitions during that time, she isn’t going to do as well most likely. It takes at last 6-8 weeks but probably even further out than that to really get to optimized fat metabolism. With her being 15 and active it would most likely be a more rapid transition than I had at 31.
If she is gung ho and has the drive to do it herself, I say let her go for it! I would keep and eye on her at first and make sure she knows the ins and out, plenty of sodium, plenty of fluids, which fats are best, etc. This is just my opinion though!
I’m interested in how she does with Keto. I have a 10 year old daughter starting now who is a competitive swimmer. It’s my understanding that upon fat adaptation, long endurance events actually become easier as you become so efficient drawing upon our relatively massive fat stores.
Since my daughters swimming events are much shorter than a marathon we want to play with some small targeted carb feedings before the event. That way we predict she’ll get a boost in performance from the new glycogen upload and hopefully return to a stable ketotic state after the races. Still learning ourselves and any input is appreciated; perhaps this strategy could work for your daughter’s shorter events.
How is your daughter now? I’ve started my 8yo on keto and she is a competitive swimmer also. Can’t say I’ve noticed a great improvement so far? She did have the week off for her birthday which I’m assuming has kicked her out of ketosis but her concentration and energy was shocking tonight 